<p>Yeah... I'm an American Anglophile and it always surprises me that Oxford is seen as more prestigious than Oxford. However, both are known here... name either of them, and people will know what you're talking about, and that's the real test of prestige.</p>
<p>Then, there are other great schools - like the University of Nottingham, where my long-distance amazing boyfriend goes ;) or Warwick - that people really don't know at all. It's interesting.</p>
<p>Haha, JRR Tolkien is/was by no means the most prominent Oxford grad, by far.</p>
<p>Now the snidey, personal comments reveal what silly people we are dealing with here- dare to speak of Oxbridge in tones that are less than reverential and you are accused of some sort of 'resentment', and false statements are made about your motives and personal history by people who know nothing about you....</p>
<p>In fact I have a pretty good idea that what prompts uWarwick/jkh is that he was turned down by LSE...why else would he be so anxious to slag the place off all the time?</p>
<p>Far from being resentful of Oxbridge I regard its component parts as being world class institutions, they are outstanding places all round, but they don't dominate in every sphere -nobody does apart from maybe Harvard. In the huge field of social sciences Oxbridge is behind LSE and always has been, and always will be..'everybody knows that' (to use a clinching uWarwick phrase)...</p>
<p>Even the pro-Oxbridge Sunday Times has this to say about LSE :</p>
<p>''LSE's claim to be the leading social science institution in the world is no hollow boast. Its consistent performance at the top of our league table, just behind Oxbridge and on a par with Imperial, is based on outstanding teaching and research, the latter shaded only by Cambridge in our measure of quality and quantity based on the most recent assessments. LSE experts are familiar names and faces in newspapers and on television; they are often the leaders in their field. </p>
<p>That applies also to the school's new director, Sir Howard Davies, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority and a former director-general of the CBI. LSE's sphere of interests is larger than its name might suggest although a degree in economics from this school still opens more doors in the City and government than possibly any other. </p>
<p>Less than 40 degrees are on offer to which a BSc in social policy and criminology will be added next year and students compete vigorously for every place here. Last year there were more than 12 applicants per place, comfortably the toughest odds in this guide. The competition is international, too. Just under half those admitted come from the UK, with huge numbers admitted from Asia and the United States. Postgraduates also outnumber undergraduates so, all in all, this is a different academic environment to most. While the LSE under-recruits from state schools, it meets or exceeds other targets for social inclusion, the result of programmes aimed at (mostly) London teenagers. </p>
<p>These include Saturday and summer schools, student mentoring and shadowing, campus visits and school talks. Situated in the heart of London, between the City and law courts to the east and Covent Garden to the west, the LSE is easy to reach by public transport and is as central as it gets.
A social plaza in front of the school's new Norman Foster-designed library encourages students to play hard, if only to take their minds off work. A Busa ranking of 40 demonstrates that the work hard, play hard ethos is very much alive even though the location of LSE's main outdoor sports facilities in deepest south London (New Malden) means sport is only for the committed. But commitment is one thing that is not in short supply here. </p>
<p>This is an intellectually challenging environment where you can't ignore the outside world because you will be asked your opinion on every topical issue. Teaching is a mixed bag. If you're part of a small department, you are less likely to get lost in the system. In larger departments pastoral care is lacking. Help isn't directly there; you have to search it out. Halls of residence and a very active set of societies are at the heart of social activities. This is a small place where you make friends quickly. There are lots of alternative nights on campus and the bar, the Tuns, is a hotbed of gossip. Everyone goes there, including the sporty lot, the academics and students from other universities.</p>
<p>Rated excellent (11) Anthropology; business and management; communication and media studies; economics; history; law; mathematics, statistics and operational research; philosophy; politics; psychology; social policy and administration.''</p>
<p>JKH says: 'It is harder for a disadvantaged student to get in to LSE than at Oxbridge'. </p>
<p>I love this: if that is the case then why not admit that it's harder for all students to get into LSE than Oxbridge?</p>
<p>Thanks JKH: incidentally where do you get your stats from?</p>
<p>Somebody comes out with an absolute cracker in one of the above posts:</p>
<p>'Then, there are other great schools - like the University of Nottingham, where my long-distance amazing boyfriend goes or Warwick - that people really don't know at all. It's interesting. '</p>
<p>It's certainly interesting: the reason people don't know about them is they're not that important...</p>
<p>conceited and hypocritical anyone?</p>
<p>
<p>Thanks JKH: incidentally where do you get your stats from?
</p>
<p>LOL Clearly your logic is failing you.</p>
<p>And it just shows you simply skip through what I wrote in my posts.</p>
<p>The latest Times ranking on the individual subjects had LSE for:</p>
<p>Athropology = 3
Business Studies = 3
Economics = 4
Geography = 2
History = 3
Law = 6
Mathematics = 13
Philosophy = 20
Politics = 18
Psychology = 17
Social Policy = 1
Sociology = 18</p>
<p>For a specialist university with much fewer subjects offered than a multi-faculty university, this is hardly an achievement and more of an embarrassment. In each of these subjects, Either Oxford or Cambridge is the tops, barring Social Policy, for which neither Cambridge nor Oxford offers.</p>
<p>Cambridge was tops in 23 subjects and came in 2nd in 8 other subjects. Oxford was top in 10 subjects and came in 2nd in 11 other subjects.</p>
<p>Somehow jkh forgot to mention that the Times placed LSE 4th overall in the UK. </p>
<p>This is despite the newspaper's bias towards Oxbridge (rememember it even has a formal sponsorship deal with Oxford), and despite the fact that the tables tend to favour big multi faculty universities that do lots of science and technology. If you look at the purely academic factors and exclude all the other junk (ie the notoriously dodgy 'destination' stats etc) very little separates the top four.</p>
<p>Even the Sunday Times recently acknowledged that LSE beat Oxford in research ratings, coming just behind Cambridge, and says it's the world's best place for social science and of course the Times Higher places LSE second in the world, ahead of Oxbridge, for social sciences -and that judgement was based on the views of 1300 people across the globe -they are far more likely to take a long term, unbiassed and impartial view than a couple of old-school hacks who buy in a handful of statisticians to run up tables that are angled in a certain direction from the start.</p>
<p>Nobody takes the individual subject rankings seriously.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Hatingtonyblair]
Somehow jkh forgot to mention that the Times placed LSE 4th overall in the UK. [\QUOTE]</p>
<p>I was saving you the embarrassment, but apparently, you have no shame anyway.</p>
<p>With these sorts of ranking for the individual subjects, it is even funnier to see LSE being placed 4th overall. A 8-10th place is more realistic. And by the way, Warwick also beat LSE in some of these subjects. Oh did I forget to mention Warwick is a multi-faculty university? How your heart must bleed, you poor thing!</p>
<p>If Times was so biased it would have:</p>
<ol>
<li>Placed Oxbridge at no.1 and 2 for all the subjects</li>
<li>Imperial would not have been placed overall 2nd place in one particular year</li>
<li>Imperial would not be so close to taking second spot again last year, just six points behind Cambridge.</li>
</ol>
<p>For those not familiar to UK, the Times Good University Guide is largely accepted as the best and most accurate guide to Universities in the UK. Obviously, there will always be some biased people such as Hatingtonyblair who would discount them just because LSE is not placed no. 1. Remember: Only Imperial ever got to no. 2 once, not LSE.</p>
<p>THES world ranking is new, and only started just last year, whereas the Times ranking has been around for more than a decade, having the wealth of time to refine its methodologies and weightings.</p>
<p>Being placed 2nd for social science in a brand new ranking table is not really an achievement. In all the various world/UK rankings, Oxbridge has always been featured highly, well above LSE. That's consistency for you.</p>
<p>Also, the Times tables have never seen LSE better for research in all the years. The figures are all there in the tables.</p>
<p>It's obvious that jkh lives in a world of his own down there in his bunker at Warwick University. </p>
<p>He claims that there are no tables or evaluations in which LSE comes ahead of Oxbridge, apart from the one done by the Times Higher (the UK's only specialist weekly university newspaper) - which he seeks to rubbish, of course.</p>
<p>It only takes a moment or two of googling to find plenty of tables or assessments in which LSE is placed ahead of either Oxbridge or Cambridge or both, as below.</p>
<p>1/The Guardian daily newspaper (in the UK), December 14 2001, commenting on the government's research assessment exercise, in which the research of all UK universities is judged: 'The London School of Economics, meanwhile secures second place in the rankings, narrowly ahead of Oxford University and Imperial College London..'</p>
<p>Interestingly Oxford was later accused in the Houses of Parliament of fraudulently boosting its research assessment results by leaving out nearly 10% of its academics (the ones who were duds at research) much to the anger of LSE and Cambridge, who submitted virtually all their academics.</p>
<p>2/The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2004:</p>
<p>Teaching -</p>
<p>Cambridge score 241 (1st)
LSE score 219 (2nd)
Oxford score 214 (4th)</p>
<p>Research -</p>
<p>Cambridge score 185 (1st)
LSE score 179 (2nd)
Oxford score 178 (3rd).</p>
<p>Now of course league tables vary and there is always some subjectivity in interpreting data.</p>
<p>But the point is clear: when comparable academic factors alone are taken into account the difference between the top four in the UK in general academic performance is very small. When non-academic or non-comparable factors or easily distorted factors are removed from the equation making up the ranking it is easy to see this(eg: 'destinations', 'income' 'degree grades', 'value-added' etc) It is only the addition of these other elements that allows ranking compilers to put Oxbridge significantly ahead in the UK.</p>
<p>3/However in the social sciences as a whole LSE has a clear lead in the UK and perhaps in the world, just as Imperial is probably the place for technology, with Oxbridge outstanding in humanities and pure science.</p>
<p>Take economics for example. A ranking put together jointly by the Universities of Guelph and Cyprus in 2003 gives a fairly typical view of how the world views the comparative strengths of these universities in this important field of the social sciences.</p>
<p>LSE position :20th in the world.
Cambridge :39th in the world.
Oxford: :40th in the world.</p>
<p>This ordering is reinforced by the celebrated Coupe ranking of economics universities, based on data gathered from 1969 to 2000.</p>
<p>LSE position: 15th in the world (best outside the USA).
Oxford: 26th in the world.
Cambridge: 33rd in the world.</p>
<p>Moral of the tale: as far as the big wide world is concerned LSE is well ahead of Oxbridge in this subject, not narrowly ahead jkh, well ahead. </p>
<p>And the point is reinforced when the Times Higher polls 1300 hundred academics across the globe and LSE comes second in the world for social sciences, scoring 185, with Oxford getting 157 (which is actually pretty generous to Oxford -of course as we know the Times Higher is an offshoot of the Times which has a formal sponsorship deal with Oxford).</p>
<p>4/The domestic subject by subject league tables inside the UK are ludicrous: they are not based on any thing other than whimsy and the need to make the tables interesting by varying them year by year. For example a couple of years ago the Guardian placed LSE first in the UK for philosophy. The next year it wasn't first. What happened in the intervening year to change its position? Nothing happened: no new data came out, there were no revelations. </p>
<p>The only safe evaluations are the ones which take the widest and longest view, : and in those LSE always does extremely well.</p>
<p>hatingtonyblair....you will never win the argument. 99 out of 100 ppl would pick Oxford given the choice between Oxford and LSE. chill out...LSE is good, it's just not up there with Oxbridge.</p>
<p>You're the one living in a dream world, I suggest you reassess you opinions. I doubt even any of your peers at LSE would support your arguments.</p>
<p>There is really no point citing hordes of other "world rankings" that places LSE above Oxbridge. If they were so useful or even accurate, these rankings will be taken seriously, talked about and discussed in forums such as CC and TSR. There is a reason why LSE does not put these fanciful rankings results in their website, you know? Go figure it out.</p>
<p>In short - one might as well not spend time on these rankings if no one knows much about them or even bothered to take notice of them. Just like the Guardian rankings in the UK. No one in UK takes the Guardian tables seriously. It is the Times that is widely accepted as the best and most accurate ones, save for a few skeptics.</p>
<p>It is so easy anyway to get average high scores for Teaching and Research in so few subjects at a specialist University like LSE. Winning by one or two points in these categories is nothing to show-off about really. Oxford and Cambridge are multi-faculty universities, and with so many more different subjects it is a much higher achievement to attain average high scores in all of them. One can only wonder why you deliberately chose to cite <em>2004</em> results and not the latest Times 2005 results.</p>
<p>If you haven't realised it by now, UCL/Warwick/Edinburgh are probably the next best multi-faculty universities. Imperial, also a specialist university, has been a consistent no. 3 contender all these years. Where is LSE? Try beating Imperial first, I would suggest.</p>
<p>"The domestic subject by subject league tables inside the UK are ludicrous: they are not based on any thing other than whimsy and the need to make the tables interesting by varying them year by year. For example a couple of years ago the Guardian placed LSE first in the UK for philosophy. The next year it wasn't first."</p>
<p>I love this: Exactly my point why only the Times rankings is widely accepted, and not the Guardian's or some other fanciful European tables you googled and found. All the more why whatever the Guardian says is just ... funny and worth just a hoot or two while reading them in the toilet.</p>
<p>I'm quite satisfied that the information I've presented here is factual and accurate. In its modest way it will help to counteract the nonsense that has been posted on this thread.I think the claims I have made have been much more reasonable and easier to defend than those advanced by the grovelling uWarwick and his pals.</p>
<p>As for those who share my views, there are many, notably the 1300 academics who contributed to the survey last year for the Times Higher, amongst others. </p>
<p>Oh, and despite what is claimed all the world rankings and other tables that I have cited are discussed in College Confidential, and on TSR, and on other forums. If in doubt just google!!</p>
<p>I've rained on your parade, uWarwick/jkh/Hash!!</p>
<p>Enjoy!!!!</p>
<p>Thank god you are finally getting off this thread! And finally realising no one else supports you or LSE here...</p>
<p>I really feel for LSE with all the sadly afflicted souls (both in CC and TSR) within its walls. Great university, shame about its students though.</p>
<p>One point for clarity: the general rankings in the UK league tables are of some interest: the problems occur when precise rankings are introduced, with half a dozen institutions often separated by just a handful of points in the scorings, or with small statistical differences deliberately inflated by mysterious 'weightings' to make things look more dramatic. </p>
<p>It's possible to locate a lead group of five universities across most of the tables -known colloquially in papers like the Times as the G5 (Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial, UCL), and to say that generally LSE has the lead in social sciences and Cambridge in science for instance,but to rank them precisely across the board year after year is unrealistic: the available data do not give that sort of precision. </p>
<p>Individual subject tables, however, varying significantly year on year really are ridiculous: for a start university departments do not change that rapidly, and the same goes for the available statistical information. And of course some of the criteria, such as 'destinations', or 'value added' really are ludicrous.</p>
<p>Don't be so sure that I'm 'finally getting off this thread..'</p>
<p>It's been fun, especially the business of undermining the insane claims about Warwick University.</p>
<p>On the other hand, jkh/uWarwick, you're starting to bore me..</p>
<p>'jkh' claims that LSE does not mention any of the rankings I mentioned on its website: this is simply not true. It's rubbish to maintain this. </p>
<p>This jkh/uWarwick person is a real operator : all that matters is keeping up the yah boo propaganda and getting the last word: welcome to the playground.</p>
<p>In fact the rankings are mentioned on many websites, including the LSE website. All the information I've cited is easily found on the net and is in wide circulation in places where these things are discussed. And the newspapers I've metnioned favourably are all highly respected and big sellers. Check it out.</p>
<p>"In its modest way it will help to counteract the nonsense that has been posted on this thread.I think the claims I have made have been much more reasonable and easier to defend than those advanced by the grovelling uWarwick and his pals."</p>
<p>Name-calling, hypocrispy, using emotional language? Hardly modest. Maybe you have been called "modest" in your hometown in India though?</p>
<p>Childish adoration for LSE's rather overrated claims? Hardly makes the case for reasonable "discussions".</p>
<p>"and to say that generally LSE has the lead in social sciences ..."</p>
<p>Did anyone remember seeing LSE being placed no. 1 for all the social sciences subjects in the Times rankings? (18th for Politics, 18th for Sociology?) Hardly the "lead" in social sciences.</p>
<p>"Individual subject tables, however, varying significantly year on year really are ridiculous: for a start university departments do not change that rapidly, and the same goes for the available statistical information."</p>
<p>Did anyone take a look at last 5 years Times rankings and noticed that Oxbridge is consistently ranked no. 1 or 2 in those same social science subjects?</p>
<p>Seriously Hatingtonyblair, other than bleating and repeating what some fanciful rankings say or what some famous people say about LSE, when are you going to produce the real evidence for the "world majority's" view on LSE's "superiority" over Oxbridge in social sciences? That 1300 academics' views are focused on the Research, not the Universities as a whole, even less its Teachings!</p>
<p>Do you, or do you not understand the stuff I'm talking about? If you don't, beg me, and I may consider answering you. </p>
<p>You are starting to get repetitive. Is this all there is you have to say about LSE?</p>
<p>"In fact the rankings are mentioned on many websites, including the LSE website"</p>
<p>LSE .. really put those rankings on its website? Oh my god ...LOL <em>hushed silence</em></p>